Crescendo, Chapter V

Quite the show, kid

The sun had traveled more than halfway across the sky by the time Samira finally stumbled out of the small office with a massive headache. It had taken hours to discuss the logistical details of her and her ship's stay, not to mention getting permission for Powder to move Stonehaven freely. She had even been lectured about taking some scrap from the basement without authorization and had to fill out dozens of forms retroactively. Multiple times had she considered murdering the small woman in front of her, although by the end she wasn't sure she'd have the strength to do it. How any person could work in a profession like this without dying from boredom was beyond her. The same went for how the empire could actually function with so many unnecessary rules to slow everything down. Maybe Noxus should change their motto to "Bureaucracy above all".

As she slowly dragged her almost lifeless body back through the corridors she attempted to organize her thoughts. The day had mostly passed, leaving her with not much more to do other than check on the kid. Which also meant she still had no idea who she was here for. After learning that Powder had most likely fled from Piltover she all but crossed her off the list of potential suspects. It certainly explained her hostile reaction when they met, considering she had possibly fought noxians just a few days before. The problem was that said list was now once again completely empty. She had tried to get some information fromthe administrative devil during their hours-long discussion, but there simply was no suspiscious occurence in the area. Of course it wasn't perfectly quiet, that would be suspicious in itself. There were a handful of petty crimes, but from what she could gather everything happening within Stonehaven and Krexor was well within the standard range.

Samira had tried to ask about surrounding outposts but that appeared to be above her personal tormentor's paygrade. She could go back to the captain and ask him, but the fact that he didn't know why she was here in the first place could mean he was involved in some way or another.

Might be easier to just pay his office a visit in the evening, see what I can find.

A smile formed on her tired face. It had been a while since her last stealth mission. This was far from the first time someone in charge was not as helpful as they ought to be, and she had always found a way to get what she needed.

With her next step planned and life slowly returning to her body Samira entered the sparring area. It was early evening now and the majority of the soldiers would be off duty soon, with only the night watch staying around. It therefore came as no surprise that there were only a handful of the more dedicated soldiers left training and sparring with one another. She gave a quick glance at a pair trading blows with training weapons and smiled to herself. Some of them might even make decent punching bags for her in the next days. For the time being she had a different objective though, as she turned to where she had left Powder a fewhours ago. The scraps she had brought the night before were strewn about, with everything that wasn't needed carelessly discarded. And, most importantly, no sign of the blue haired tinkerer. Samira stifled a laugh. Of course the younger womanwandered off. She couldn't blame her, she'd have done the exact same thing.

A quick inspection of the pile of scrap proved the gun to be missing. With that in mind the mercenary got back up and turned to one of the training soldiers.

"Hey pals, any of you happen to know where the shooting range is?"


The sound of metal hitting metal reverberated inthe air as Jinx repeatedly hit the barrel of her new weapon with a small hammer with some frustration. Repairing the firing mechanism had been easy enough given how archaic it was, but straightening out the barrel so she could actually shoot where she aimed proved difficult with the tools she was given. Even the greatest artist was limited by their material. Or something like that.

Taking the gun off the ground she inspected it once more. She spent the last hour or so shooting at the straw dummies that apparently counted as a shooting range here, before sitting down and making adjustments after every shot. And to reload of course, because for some reason whoever designed this weapon thought it be a great idea having to load it one bullet at a time.

The first shot she took had gone so far off target that it hit some of the armor that the dummies where wearing and almost ricocheted back in her face. That would've been one hell of a way to go, she had to admit. Afterwards she had been a bit more careful and through multiple tries had adjusted the weapon to the point where it was almost accurate. Which was the current issue. Almost just didn't cut it, yet she simply lacked the tools for more precise adjustments. Reloading the weapon with a shrug she slowly stood back up and took aim. For the time being this was better than nothing. She pulled the trigger and immediately steadied her hand against the gun's recoil, watching the bullet tear off an imaginary ear from one of the dummies. She gave an annoyed groan, that wasn't even closer to the target than the shot before.

"You do know these are meant for bows and crossbows, yeah?"

She slowly turned towards the approaching figure of Samira, who was smiling widely.

"I did ask one of the soldiers if he wanted to be the dummy, but he didn't seem to keen on it." she replied with a grin of her own.

"A shame, really. Target practice is a lot more realistic when your target is moving, eh?" The taller woman came to a halt next to her and looked at the handful of straw dummies, half of which where missing parts of their heads with dark scorchmarks showing the points of impact from earlier attempts.

"I gotta say though, I'm impressed. Guess you really do know a thing or two about blackpowder weapons, huh?" Jinx couldn't help but feel a small amount of pride in her abilities.

"Of course I do, even though you went out of your way to find the worst one there is." She expected the mercenary to be a bit offended, but she instead smiled and – almost faster than Jinx could see – grabbed her own guns, unloading a barrage of shots on the dummies. She watched as they tore straight through the straw figures, not a single shot missing it's target as far as she could tell. The sound of gunfire faded as Samira blew away some smoke from one of her guns muzzle, looking way too pleased with herself.

"Not too bad for one eye, eh? Imagine if I had both." Jinx couldn't help but laugh.

"How does that work anyway? Aren't you missing some pretty important depth perception?" The other woman shrugged.

"I assume the same way you manage to shrug off a powerful weapon's recoil while looking like a walking skeleton. Loads of training." And some shimmer-powered super strength in her case, but she got the point. Another question popped up in her head that she had almost forgot about.

"So what now?" Samira looked at her in confusion, so she continued. "You wanted me to prove I can fix a gun and I did, what's the plan now? I'm kinda just here to make some money, remember?" The other woman laughed.

"You proved that, alright." She paused for a moment and looked her over with a face that Jinx hadn't seen on her before. It looked almost ... sympathetic?She wasn't sure she liked that.

"I'll likely be staying here for a few days. How about you come over as long as I'm here and we discuss the improvements to my gear you promised. And in return I'll pay for whatever you need." Jinx looked at her a bit dumbfounded. That seemed like too good a deal to not have a catch.

"I could need quite a lot of stuff though." she tried, but the other woman shrugged the comment off.

"Kid, I have the funds of someone who's doing the missions nobody else can do, I think I'll be alright." She opened her mouth to reply, but the older woman cut her off by raising her hands, guns still in them. "There's no pressure, if you want to leave I won't be chasing you, promised. Just think about it and tell me once you made up your mind, eh?"

A second passed. Then another. Still she couldn't think of a reason not to take the offer.

"Under one condition." The other woman raised an eyebrow with a curious grin. Jinx pointed towards the rusty gun. "I wasn't done with target practice, but I used up all the blackpowder you had readied before." She said with a meaningful look towards her companion's weapons. Samira smiled knowingly. "That so, huh? Would be a shame to end a training session early." With that she flipped over the gun in her left hand and held the handle out to Jinx, who eagerly took it. Before she could take a shot however the mercenary spoke up again.

"Oh, before I forget about it, this could be useful if you're gonna stick around."

She looked over to see the other woman fish around in her pocket - which was an impressive feat given how short her pants were – before producing a small iron coin with the emblem of the Trifarix on it and flicking it over to her.

"Show this to any Brutuses that try and stop you from walking around the place. Just maybe stay out of restricted areas." She added with a wink. Jinx hesitated for a moment before pocketing the coin.

"Alright, thanks." There was a loud gasp from next to her.

"She can say thank you, I don't believe it."

"Maybe don't make fun of me after you gave me a gun."

"Hah, you couldn't raise your weapon before having a hole in your chest, darling."

"Oh yeah? Let's see you try and shoot me after I take your other eye."

There was a moment of silence before laughter filled the area. It had been a long time since Jinx felt she could just laugh this freely. Maybe this deal wasn't so bad after all. She looked back up at the taller woman with a challenging grin.

"Bet I can hit more targets than you. I'll even close an eye to make it fair."

"Ohh, in that case I'll get on my knees to make it fair."

Their bickering and shooting rang out through the training area until the sun had almost set.


It was later than Samira had anticipated when she was on her way back to the captain's office. They had kept at their "target practice" until it was too dark to actually see the targets anymore. The kid was extraordinary with a gun, she had to admit. She was better, of course, but she had trained with firearms since she was twelve, which was almost twenty years ago. So probably roughly as long as Powder has been alive for. And even then she was exceptionally skilled. So for the girl to even be comparable to her was impressive in it's own right. Add to that the fact she was apparently some kind of genius when it came to mechanical stuff and it was enough to make someone feel inadequate. Not her of course, she knew she was the best at what she did, but once the soldiers here started noticing what she was capable of they might get somewhat frustrated.

Gods, it's like one big déjà vu with her.

It was clear that she didn't want to get entangled with Noxus and for obvious reasons, so Samira made sure to remind her not to show off too much when she left a few minutes ago – even if she wasn't sure Powder listened to her at all. Getting the attention of powerful people could be dangerous, even more so in a place like Noxus. Maybe she could help the younger woman out a bit in that regard, she did manage to work with the empire but not for it for quite some time now. Besides, if all she wanted was to make a bit of money and leave Noxus again, there wasn't really any ...

A body on the floor caught her attention. She lowered herself slightly while slowly inching forward and scanning the surrounding corridor. There was no sign of movement, but she could hear some distant thumping noise from a few hallways away. It was hard to make out details in the dimly lit hallway, but upon getting closer to the body she could see the torchlight reflecting in a pool of red liquid dripping from the guard. A closer inspection showed no signs of breathing and no pulse. She looked over the body and found no signs of him putting up a fight at all. The look on his face seemed almost surprised, like he died faster than his brain was able to comprehend. Which, looking at the rest of him, might have very well been what happened. The armour he was wearing was distorted and mangled, almost appearing to have crushed him within it. Samira's eye narrowed. She remembered seeing similiarly bent corpses and structures when she was chasing down her mystery weapon at a compound near Qualthala. She looked back up, a smile playing on her lips. It appeared her target came to her this time.

She moved as slowly as necessary, barely able to contain her excitement about the potential fight. She had chased after this person for more than eight months now, without being able to go face to face with them. But she forced herself to stay calm for a moment longer, even the best of fighters could die by a blade they never saw coming. Slowly she headed towards the origin of the noises she heard before. She wasn't at all surprised when it led her straight to the captain's office, with the hinges bent outwards and the door unhinged and put up against the wall. There was a rustling sound coming from inside, and she could see a small trail of blood leading from within the room. It appeared the captain was working overtime today.

Guess he was just an incompetent idiot after all.

Other people might've tried to give themselves an advantage in this situation. Attempt to sneak in and take the assailant by surpise. Samira however was not like other people. Now that she was sure there was nobody else around to ambush her, she straightened back up, grabbed hold of Blaze and Thorn and began confidently walking into the room. She was greeted with the sight of Stonehaven's captain lying in front of the entrance, his face contorted in pain, with his own battleaxe embedded into his chest. Further into the room stood a figure behind the captains desk, shuffling through papers while mumbling to themselves. They were wearing what looked like a dark body suit, with heavy noxian looking armor supporting the arms and legs especially. Everthing else she could see was a shock of bright blonde hair, as they were leaning over the table. They had also not noticed Samira enter yet.

"You know, I didn't like this guy. But impaling him seems a bit extreme, don't you think?"

The figure looked up with a grim expression ... and Samira paused. It was the face of a dark-skinned girl, probably younger than even Powder, with golden eyes and a look of pure hatred on her face. She eyed Samira up for a moment, before opening her mouth.

"I gave him the chance to surrender. He didn't." golden eyes bored into her. "Do you?"

Wow. This girl was intense. Samira's grin widened. "Not really one for surrendering I'm afraid. But I am supposed to take you in alive, so if you wouldn't mind giving up yourself, that would make things a lot easier for both of us, eh?" The girl's expression didn't change. Samira heard the faintest of metallic sound from behind her and leaped to the side, flipping over in the air so she could land on her feetand raised both her weapons at the strange girl in a single motion. A lock of hair from her braid fell to the groundin front of her, severed by the captains greataxe that shot out from his corpse and straight into the girl's hand.

"Okay." Samira said. "Negotiation's over."

Bullets filled the air as the mercenary began firing wave after wave at her opponent, who made no move of dodging. Instead her armor seemed to almost flow outwards and formed a protective shield hovering a foot from her in mid air, blocking the projectiles. Realizing that this also blocked her vision of her, Samira dashed forwards to close the distance and switched out her guns for her blade, activated a trigger on her weapon causing it's upper half to bend in a right angle before swinging it at the girl like a scythe. Before she could make impact however the wall of metal that protected her opponent suddenly launched itself forward and only a dive to the ground saved Samira from being squished like a bug. While on the ground she rolled sideways, using her momentum to roll past the girl before leaping up, activating the trigger to straigthen her weapon and swinging at her opponents right leg. Her strike got interrupted by a familiar looking metal axe, hovering at the girl's other side. Golden eyes flicked towards her weapon in frustration, before with a shout she seemed to almost slam the axe forward and pushed Samira back.

"What did you do to your weapons?" the stranger demanded to know, to which Samira chuckled.

"Some gifts from my benefactor. Hard to control for you, eh?" The girls brows furrowed.

"Like that'll matter."

She pushed both her hands forwards with a scream and unleashed a storm of metal upon Samira. Decades of acrobatic training was the only thing that saved her, as she leaped across the room, narrowly evading lethal strikes every second. There was no chance for her to counterattack as all she could do was stay alive against this powerful mage. She had no idea how long they were caught in this deadly game, it felt like hours though it was probably only a few minutes. At one point she heard the shout of a guard who ran in trying to help and immediately got decapitated.

Dancing through the room in a tornado of metal was not somehting one can do indefinitely, she could feel herself getting slower, the metal shards beginning to graze her, not quite avoidable anymore as she was getting cut by hundred small metal fragments. Yet despite it all Samira was smiling widely, as she saw the sweat beginning to form on the girl's forehead. No matter how powerful, everyone had their limits, and at such a young age she could not have had the amount of training necessary to control her power for longer periods of time. As if to prove her right, the storm around her began to slow down.

That was Samira's time to strike. While leaping over a sharpened piece of armor she swung her blade downwards and activated the blackpowder function on the sword to boost it's movement and in turn change her own momentum. It was the first time she had done so in this fight, so it caught the younger woman by surprise and she rushed to refocus her attack on her. Due to her fatigue that meant she wasn't as focused on defending herself at the same small window was all Samira needed as she flew through the air, unholstered her weapon and shot in a fraction of a second. Her reward came in a pained scream and the immediate slowing down of the storm around her. She hit the ground with a pained gasp, but her focus hadnot been to land safely.

The mercenary shakingly got to her feet, blood pouring out of hundreds of tiny cuts all over her body. She looked around the room, breathing heavily. The interior had been torn apart completely, the storm basically shredding everything it had caught. Unfortunately the corpses of the captain and the unlucky guard were no exceptions, as they had been scattered across the room in a macabre painting. Samira could also hear the alarm bells ringing, the entire night watch would presumably be here soon. She wasn't sure whether that was a good thing however, as the mage was still conscious in front of her, albeit breathing heavily and clutching her side where blood was pouring through her fingers. Samira had tried to make the shot non lethal, but there was no guarantuee in a life or death situation like this. She slowly approached the girl, trying to catch her breath and stay on her feet. Her vision was getting slightly blurry, the bloodloss starting to show.

"That was ... quite the show, kid." she slowly began, and the younger woman looked up to glare at her. "But what do you say we call it a day and you give up now, huh?" There was a short pause before her opponent began speaking.

"You have no idea what you're fighting for, do you?" Samira rolled her eyes, she was not in the mood for a lecture from a child.

"I fight for whoever pays most, that's all I need to know." The girl seemed to almost smile sadly in response.

"Yeah, that's all you people are, mindless drones to do their biddings." The rush of energy made Samira's hair stand on end and she rushed forward to knock out her opponent. But she was too late, too exhausted, as a thick metal statue smacked into her side and flung her across the room like a rag doll. She impacted the wall and slid down to the ground, trying to get her feet back under her even as the world wouldn't stop spinning. A fist encased in metal came for her head and she just about managed to avoid the final blow, twisting her entire body towards her attacker and strike at where she assumed the wound to be in return. But her fist impacted heavy armour and she felt a few bones snap. Two golden eyes appeared in her hazy field of vision.

"If you would've gone for the kill you would have gotten me." The words came out through pained breaths. "I can't let you get another chance." With great effort the mage raised the heavy greataxe over her head and Samira realized that she had no more tricks up her sleeves. "This is the only reward you can get, serving the Black Rose." She watched on helplessly as the axe began it's descend.

BOOM

Purple filled her vision as something shot through the door and collided with the mage, sending her tumbling onto the floor, the axe impacting the wall behind her instead. Through her blurry vision Samira saw a young, pale, thin woman with a terrible sense of style and glowing purple eyes, looking from her to the other girl in confusion. The last thing she heard before she lost consciousness was her new friend's panicked voice.

"What in the hells is happening here!?"


She was on her way to pratice when she collapsed. Her guitarcase fell to the ground with a crash, as her scream echoed through the streets of Piltover. People came running towards her to see what was wrong or if they could help. She didn't want them to. She needed them to go away. It was so much worse when people were around. She could hear it all. Their confusion, their worry, their fears and desires. It was like dissonant screaming in her ears. The pain was unbearable and all these people trying to help just made it worse. She screamed for them to leave. They didn't understand. It was too much. She turned to the versions of them she could hear and told them to leave. Everyone rushed away as fast as they could. The pain remained but subsided slowly. It barely mattered, she could hear the entire city. Why was this happening? Blood trickled out of her ears and mixed with her tears on the pavement. Slowly - agonizingly so - the world normalized around her and she managed to get back on her feet.

The previous attacks had been nowhere near this bad. She thought she could keep itsecret, but that was no longer an option. She wiped away her tears and brushed some of the bright pink hair out of her face, before grabbing her guitarcase and heading towards the Academy. She needed to tell someone. She needed help.


Authors note:

Ending the fifth chapter on some dark notes I suppose. As always, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed the first fight scene I ever wrote. I would greatly appreciate some feedback to the fight in particular when it comes to pacing and vizualisation. Also, thank you for the reviews and the advice to post this story an AO3 as well. I'll definitely think about it but for the moment I'm still trying to keep the regular writing up and am not too bothered should the amount of views or follows not be as high as it could. That being said, thank you for everyone that does read, fav, follow and review, you're awesome, Happy Holidays and I'll see you all next chapter. Also obvious disclaimer, I do not own Arcane, League of Legends or any of their characters, they belong to Riot Games.

Edit: I've moved the story over to the League of Legends tag, as I'm including more League champions than I originally anticipated. The backbone of this story is definitely going to stay the story of Arcane however. Crossover felt kind of pointless as it's technically the same universe, so this is what I settled on. Nothing else changed, just wanted to give a quick explanation. Thanks for reading and see you next chapter.